Mediation Centre of Europe

Mediation

Mediation is administered by the Mediation Centre of Europe, of the Mediterranean and of the Middle East (CEM) under its Mediation Rules.

Mediation proceedings
Many litigants take the view that, if the dispute can be settled, they can do it themselves with their counsel. If they fail, nobody else could achieve that.
This approach disregards that each party and its Counsel are inevitably one sided and will rarely identify their week sides and their consequences.
Abandoning so soon attempts to settle the matter, will frequently bring a party to waive its claim or to litigate it before state courts or an arbitral tribunal. This will absorb relevant costs, frequently out of proportion with the dispute, human resources and time.
CEM firmly believes that before resorting the litigation, it is in the interest of the parties to try once more to settle, by asking this institution to appoint a mediator whose task is not to decide the case but to understand the parties, to discuss even repeatedly with each of them separately their strong and week points and their consequences and by treating in strict confidence all what a party does not wish to be known by the other one, and to try as much as possible to approach them, in order that the dispute may be settled.
It has been nicely said that, in order to achieve this, the mediator must induce the parties to change their initial approach to the dispute.

Standard clauses
It is recommended to the parties to select the standard agreement of this institution to mediate and – if unsuccessful – to arbitrate the dispute.
The parties are offered a short mediation and arbitration clause while a longer one which deals with several important and delicate other issues is also available to more sophisticated users.